Nice simile to end on. I appreciate the commanding tone and the novel approach to the prompt. Not sure about the use of “comrades” because of its connotations. I guess I would need to know more about your intention to see if it worked.

I thought about that with “comrades”. But friends didn’t seem right. Citizens. No. Fellows? Maybe, but it didn’t seem strong enough and didn’t have enough…impact to show the strength of the people. They are family/friends/soldiers/citizens/one people used to rebuilding.

Lovely, strong imagery here. The rhythm of “Forget the fallen; let go; hold on.” is positively delicious. The last line didn’t do it for me – I was caught trying to figure out what you were dripping on a candle before I got to the image you were trying to convey. I might have written “as _from_ a tapered candle,” maybe, or “as if from a taper.”

I kept going back and forth trying different words. I still hadn’t made up my mind entirely 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it. The Forget the follen — was a punctuation nightmare. Dashes? No. Full stops? No. Dash and full stop? No… LOL